Meet Nancy Whiteman: A Cannabis Exec Making Serious Coin With Gummies

As founder and CEO of Wana Brands, Nancy Whiteman certainly doesn’t fit the stereotype of a cannabis entrepreneur. She’s 60 years old, Ivy League-educated and was the owner of a marketing consulting firm before detouring into the space eight years ago. Last year, her company, which makes cannabis gummies, was ranked number one in the edibles category in Colorado. Further, she estimates her business will pull in between $16 million and $17 million in sales at the end of the year.

So, what is the secret of her success, particularly in an industry not exactly kind to startups?

“One of the advantages of being my age is that I’ve been in business for a long time,” explains the Chicago-born Whiteman. “I’ve seen other industries. We didn’t need to invent the wheel for this industry. I’ve spent time getting our production processing to the point where we have a very good supply chain. It’s doing a lot of small things right.”

That includes churning out a well-received product, maintaining a standard of customer service and conducting extensive pre-market testing of the gummies for “potency, contaminants and residual solvents.” The latter, though, as Whiteman points out, is hardly a groundbreaking measure considering product testing is a statewide legal requirement.

Wana officially launched in July 2010 as a bootstrapped startup. According to Whiteman, a Cornell grad who grew up in White Plains, New York, Wana has never had to seek out investors because “we have done extremely and have been able to fund our growth from internal sources.”

Following a period of experimentation with various candy and infused goods, Wana didn’t start developing gummies until a year and a half into its operations. When the gummies were introduced, it became the company’s breakthrough flagship product.

“Everybody liked it,” says Whiteman, adding that the gummies are both popular in both Colorado’s medical and recreational use markets. “When you step back from cannabis and think about gummies—it’s a multimillion dollar category. Everyone likes gummies and they’ve become a pharmaceutical platform. You don’t need to make an enormous commitment to calories or sugar—you can eat one and you’re done. It’s a nice and discreet way to dose and a precise way.”

Headquartered in Boulder, Wana has licensing deals in Colorado, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. Whiteman says they’re currently launching in Florida and Illinois and are in “deep discussions” with other states.

Wana can only sell to dispensaries, not individuals. Also, the company cannot ship products out of state due to the federal illegality. Because of these restrictions, Wana has spent a great deal of time cultivating dispensary owners as they are the ones who do the ordering and the product sampling.

Currently, Wana Sour Gummies, which come in assorted flavors and in packets ranging between 10 pieces to 20, retail between $20 and $24.

Although Wana does work with a bank—a credit union, to be exact—Whiteman, like so many other cannabis entrepreneurs, has struggled to find a bank that would accept her business as a client.

“We’ve gone through four or five banks,” she admits.

Whiteman says she hasn’t encountered problems with her being a woman in this field.

“One of things that’s so refreshing in the cannabis industry is that it’s so brand new,” says Whiteman. “There’s no glass ceiling to break out. Everyone is sort of figuring it out together. In some ways, being a woman entrepreneur in cannabis has been helpful. If you look at the demographics of users, now it skews more female and older. Originally, it was a much younger male demographic. So, I understand the demographic very well.”

I'm an East Coast-based business journalist who has covered the emerging legal cannabis sector for a number of outlets that include the Wall Street Journal, Venture Capital Journal, Buyouts and Investopedia. In addition to legal cannabis, I've also written about private equi...